NAPLES, Italy (LifeSiteNews) — The new cardinal of Naples will wash the feet of a prominent LGBT activist during Maundy Thursday liturgy this year, in a move hailed as support for the LGBT lifestyle by activists.
As highlighted by Messa in Latino, the newly minted cardinal of Naples, Cardinal Domenico Battaglia, will include a prominent LGBT activist in the Maundy Thursday Mandatum ceremony of foot-washing today.
One of the twelve individuals who will form part of the ceremony is Carlo Cremona, who serves as “president of IKen LGBT Napoli, homosexual activist, creator of Questa Casa Nonè UnAlbergo and of the Sportelli Rainbow Center Napoli.”
Breaking the news on Facebook, the IKen LGBT group wrote that Cremona’s being included in the ceremony “is a concrete sign of a Church that recognizes and loves people in truth.”
The LGBT group added:
It is a powerful gesture, capable of bringing hope to those who have been excluded. Everyone is invited to participate in this moment of faith and fraternity, which is certainly of historic significance.
Love is never wrong when it comes from respect and truth about oneself.
Included in the social media post were the slogans “inclusive church” and “LGBT rights.”
While the group argued that their inclusion was a sign of the Church that “loves people in truth,” the Catholic Church condemns the homosexual and transgender lifestyle.
The Catechism teaches that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law.” The text is very clear that homosexual activity can never be approved, and repeats that “[h]omosexual persons are called to chastity.”
Under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1986, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a document instructing bishops on the pastoral care of homosexual persons. The CDF admonished bishops to ensure they, and any “pastoral programme” in the diocese, are “clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral.”
Prior to this, the CDF had issued a 1975 document, Persona Humana, which warned against the tenets of the modern transgender movement, stating “there can be no true promotion of man’s dignity unless the essential order of his nature is respected.”
The Church also teaches that God creates every individual male or female at the moment of his or her conception, and that sex is an immutable trait that “characterizes man and woman not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and spiritual, making its mark on each of their expressions.”
Catholic teaching condemns mutilation and sterilization as “against the moral law” and denounces gender ideology.
Battaglia has led the Archdiocese of Naples since December 2020 and was created cardinal by Pope Francis in December 2024.
The Mandatum ceremony on Maundy Thursday, which he and numerous other Catholic clergy perform today, is done after the manner of Christ’s washing the feet of the twelve apostles at the Last Supper, and twelve individuals are chosen in representation of the apostles.
Over the centuries the tradition developed in Rome that the Pope would wash the feet of twelve clerics, followed then by twelve of the city’s poor. The ceremony was always limited to men – in imitation of the apostles – but in 2016 Pope Francis officially altered the Church’s liturgy to allow for washing women’s feet at the Holy Thursday.
While local practice beforehand had illegally included the washing of women’s feet during the Maundy Thursday Mandatum, the Pope’s 2016 decree formally instituted the custom. Francis wrote to Cardinal Sarah, saying the formal change was made with “the intention of improving the manner in which it is carried out, so that it fully expresses the meaning of the gesture performed by Jesus in the Upper Room, his giving of himself ‘to the end’ for the salvation of the world, his charity without boundaries.”
Francis had garnered headlines from the beginning of his pontificate by washing the feet of women and Muslims, and last year was the first time that all twelve individuals were women.
However, the Mandatum has rapidly become seen as a political stage as much as a liturgical rite – an aspect made clear by the response of the IKen LGBT group to its president’s inclusion in Cardinal Battaglia’s ceremony today.
